The House of Lords is in some ways similar to the Cresta Run, the toboggan track that has since 1885 thrilled wealthy visitors to the Swiss ski resort of St Moritz. Both were established to give the aristocracy something to do, and in both arenas, it seems all that is needed is to be the right sort of person to get in; gravity will do the rest. Perhaps unsurprisingly, they can attract some of the same people, such as Clifton Hugh Lancelot de Verdon Wrottesley – a big name, both literally and figuratively, in the worlds of tobogganing (he has won the sport’s Grand National 17 times) and inherited political power.
Baron Wrottesley is one of 92 hereditary peers whose role in our democracy is imperilled by the Hereditary Peers Bill, which was introduced to parliament yesterday. This short bill proposes to “remove the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords”. It will no doubt be a concern to the five (yes, five) people who cast first-preference votes for Wrottesley to become one of our lawmakers in July 2022, in a by-election in which 45 people were eligible to vote (41 turned up) to appoint two seats in the House of Lords; the other went to the appropriately named Lord Remnant.
Think of the expertise our democracy will lose! Wrottesley’s forebears have been parliamentarians for centuries, and have held political power in some form since his ancestor was enfeoffed in the 12th century. He may only have spoken in the Lords three times in the two years since being readmitted (having previously been a member until the previous Labour government removed automatic inherited membership in 1999), but his contributions have been top drawer: the first was to inform the Lords that he was sad the Queen had died, which very much needed saying, and the most recent was to encourage the government to support the playing of ice hockey.
Wrottesley has however voted 171 times, siding with his fellow Conservative lords on every occasion, helping to decide the making of Britain’s laws on issues such as economic crime, illegal migration and online safety. This, to critics of the Lords, is the real issue. It’s not ideal, but paying a small group of aristocrats £361 a day to turn up to a nice building and wrap themselves in dead stoat (the latest Lords accounts values the House’s ermine robes at £217,453) is a relatively affordable part of the furniture of a country in which the head of state is a 75-year-old man whose sole qualification is the ownership of a magic hat. The far more expensive and serious problem is that these people have a role in making our laws.
Nor will this problem be solved by ridding the upper house of the carefully bred. The Lords is also host to hundreds of people – friends, donors, relatives and retirees – who will continue to have lifelong access to parliament. Since Theresa May’s resignation honours in 2019, 146 new peerages have been issued, more than half of them to Conservatives. Boris Johnson notably issued peerages to his own brother, to his friend the newspaper proprietor Evgeny Lebedev, and to the cricketer Ian Botham. Other notable life peers include Michelle Mone (ennobled in 2015 by David Cameron), whose husband’s company, PPE Medpro, is currently being investigated by the National Crime Agency.
Keir Starmer has said that he wants to abolish the House of Lords and that he hopes this will be possible within this parliament. It makes sense to start with achievable chunks of this reform – next steps could include removing the over-80s from the Lords, or retiring the 26 bishops (the Lords Spiritual) who are automatically given a seat. The lords themselves have raised the idea of removing those members who rarely if ever attend.
Wholesale reform will be considerably harder, but it is the only thing that can make such changes stick. The current bill is effectively a “temporary measure”, according to Jessica Garland, director of policy and research at the Electoral Reform Society: “If we still appoint our chamber by prime ministerial patronage, there’s no limit to that, and the size [of the Lords] can grow again.”
This is what happened after New Labour took the first step in reforming the Lords in 1999. Rather than completing reform, it stuffed the upper chamber with new peers; Tony Blair retains the record for total life peerages handed out, at a whopping 374 in ten years, although David Cameron appointed more on average per year of his premiership, creating 245 new peers in just over six years. This is the much easier option: rather than getting into a long constitutional fight you can just make hundreds of your political allies very happy. If this government repeats the pattern we could end up with a thousand people in the second chamber (there are currently 805).
At a time of very low trust in politics, this is arguably a much more important fight to have than it has been in previous parliaments – but it also falls to a government that is having to spend political capital on other conflicts, from workers’ rights to spending and taxation. Progress beyond a few tweaks is far from guaranteed.
[See also: The Grenfell report is damning for David Cameron]
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